Our team of e-Commerce experts outline an effective strategy for increasing and optimising your sales!

Every two weeks our e-Commerce experts have one unique goal: to help the 7,300 etailers who use our solution sell and convert customers more effectively and attract more customers to their webpages. Today we’ll be giving you advice on how to make your landing pages as effective as possible, as they play a key role in your ability to turn visitors into customers, and are an important part of your e-Commerce business.

As an etailer, it’s important to master the art of landing pages. Visitors to your website decide very quickly if they’re going to stay on your site (and eventually maybe make a purchase) or go back to the previous page they were on, whether this is a search engine, blog, price comparison site or their inbox. And when we say “very quickly” we mean literally seconds. Which is why it’s so important to provide them with your most convincing arguments in the best design possible. Effective landing pages can reduce your bounce rate and increase your conversion rate. According to the email marketing specialist Raffles Media an optimised landing page can triple your conversion rate, which means a higher turnover for your website!

(And if you’re worried about getting traffic to your site don’t hesitate to reread our Oxatis expert advice on SEO or SEA!

Our e-Commerce experts’ advice this week will help you improve your landing pages, boost your conversion rate and, in just a few seconds, convince visitors stay on your site.

THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND:

1. A landing page welcomes visitors to your site after they’ve clicked on an AdWords advert or email campaign. This is their first contact with your e-Commerce website, and a good landing page can multiply your ROI for all of your marketing ventures.2. The goal of a landing page is to lead visitors to your conversion funnel. 3. There are some important rules to follow: reduce distractions, one message per page, customise information, etc.4. A/B testing is key for improving your landing pages!5. Measure and analyse what’s working and constantly fine-tune: your turnover will benefit!6. An effective landing page will convert visitors into customers: use them for your different marketing strategies (sales, events, clearance, etc.) or to thank your best customers.

Effective Landing Pages: A sure way to boost your turnover!

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How do landing pages work?

Let’s start at the beginning. What exactly are landing pages and why are they so important?

A landing page is literally a page on your website that visitors land on. This can mean any page on your website, from your homepage to a specific product page to your terms and conditions. It is also possible to create very specific pages, for example for specific marketing campaigns, whether you are using AdWords or email.

What should your landing page contain? What story should it tell?It is very important when creating landing pages to ask yourself: what are you offering? What response are you looking for? It’s important to put yourself in your visitor’s shoes and consider for each of your webpages “what would I think if this was the first page I landed on?”

On your way to the perfect landing pageUnderstanding the importance of a landing page no matter what goods or services you are selling will allow you to separate the following elements which play an important role in your visitors’ first impression and influence their buying behaviour:

- A catchy title: Not only does this make your readers want to know more, it gives them an immediate idea of what your site is about. - Reassuring elements and authority: this will help you convince visitors your site is reliable, credible and one that they can trust for their purchases. On average, 63% of visitors say they are more inclined to buy a product on a website with customer reviews (Evoc study). Reread our Oxatis expert advice on 15 tips to increase your turnover!- Action: with strong and clear Call to Action buttons your visitors will know where to click to proceed (and not go back to the previous page!) Smartbox increased their conversion rate by 5% by making their CTA more visible on certain pages. How? By simply changing the colour of their “order” buttons (A/B Tasty). - Attractive images: with a conversion rate of up to 7 times higher with images don’t hesitate to use them, especially on your product and category pages.

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Goal: Get them in your conversion funnel

Making your landing pages effective is important, but it’s not the only thing you should worry about. Your goal is to lead your visitors through the conversion funnel and the different stages of the shopping cart (we suggest you reread our Oxatis expert advice on this subject ), and often a landing page is just the starting point. And for each step you can keep an eye on exactly what’s happening with Oxatis' exclusive conversion metrics (take a look!)Here are a few of the best practices for landing pages:

Good practice No. 1: Reduce escape routesAs the goal of a landing page is to encourage a visitor to act (and go through that famous conversion funnel) it’s best to remove any potential distractions: navigation, ads, sales not directly related to the product in question, newsletter sign-up, footer and social network buttons that lead to other pages.

Good Practice No.2: 1 page=1 messageIt can be tempting to want to say lots of different things to convince visitors to stay. But like talking non-stop when you are stressed, this is a mistake. The rule for effective landing pages is one message at a time. This does not mean you only have one thing to say, just that it’s best to work on one goal at a time and not fill up space just to fill it. Work on making your messages as effective as possible and you will see a positive impact on your conversion rate!

Good Practice No.3: use A/B testingDon’t forget to test if your landing pages work! Create your landing page, put it online, direct traffic to it and measure how well it works compared to the rest of your website. Then test other approaches and compare results. Then start over. By constantly improving a few percent at a time this will make a big difference to your turnover. Bonus: Oxatis' tool allows you to send two email campaigns containing two links to two different landing pages to help speed up the process!

Here again Oxatis can help you set up your landing pages and A/B testing. Call us at 0845 129 4800 or request a free call back by clicking on the button below.

Good Practice No. 4: CustomiseSome of your visitors will land on your site through campaigns: AdWords, Email or Social Networks for example. This means you have information about them and can customise the offer or message you send them. Take advantage of this technique, it will help your conversion rate!

Good Practice No. 5: KPI, Metrics and business goals you should know like the back of your handYou’ll know by now that it’s rare that we don’t cover this subject, and that this is with good reason. As for everything else on your site keep a close eye on your goals and performance indicators. This is important for your conversion rate!

Good Practice No.6: The funnel strategy begins before the landing page Your visitors are somewhere before they land on your site, whether you’re using an email or keyword campaign it’s important to be coherent for your conversion funnel. Make sure that the design and message from the email are present on the landing page or use the same keywords in an ad and on the landing page…and make sure you direct them to the right page! For example, for the keyword Fuji it would be a shame to send visitors to a general category of “all cameras” which would have a large bounce rate when the category “Fuji cameras” would be much more effective.

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Use Landing Pages to keep your website up to date and dynamic

Once you’ve understood how landing pages work they can become a real sales tool for your e-Commerce website. Here’s how!

Try to use specific landing pagesCreating one good landing page and reusing it is not the name of the game. You can (and should) create new ones for new products, sales animation, changes in your catalogue etc. Take advantage of this opportunity to be as specific as possible. The more precise you are, the more impact your message will have and the more likely it will be to convert customers. Remember, you’re not limited as to the number of pages you can create!

Never, ever, lead customers directly to your home pageThis does not mean your home page is not important, on the contrary. But when you have the choice of deciding where your visitors will land, take advantage of this and lead them to a page specially designed to convert, in other words, a landing page!

Use your landing pages to spike your salesEvery etailer uses, and will continue to use, sales to help promote their products. Landing pages are a great way to help advertise your sales: the products in question, facts, highlighting the advantages of the discount…here again there are many reasons to use landing pages.

A good way to strengthen customer loyaltyMake your loyal customers feel that they’re being taken care of and that you save the best discounts, exclusive products and private sales for them. Here again landing pages are your friends as they allow you to change and adapt your message for your loyal customers.

A few ideas for special landing pages to test for your e-Commerce websiteNow you have everything you need to boost your turnover. Why not try these landing pages?- A selection of special products for an event landing page (ex: summer, mother’s day, Christmas etc.) There’s always an occasion to create a specific catalogue and bring in some extra traffic.-A sales/ clearance event landing page. Give your customers good deals.-An avant-premiere landing page. Are you introducing a brand new product? Feature it as an exclusive item not to be missed.-A private sales for loyal customers landing page. These customers keep coming back to your site and are probably your most profitable customers. Thank them!-A special first order landing page. Here as opposed to the previous landing page it’s a question of encouraging visitors to your site for the first time to make a purchase. This is a great way to expand your customer database.

Now it's your turn!

Our e-Commerce experts are available to answer all of your questions and provide you with all of the information you need. Don’t hesitate to contact us!